Ryza
Ryza, also known as the "Furnace of Shackled Stars," is an Imperial Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus that is located in the Segmentum Ultima of the galaxy. The planet is home to the Titan Legion called the Legio Crucius, known also as "The Warmongers." The Forge World of Ryza has been plunged into the abyss of war. The planet was once famous for supplying the Imperium with magnetic containment fields and Plasma Weapons -- the Leman Russ Executioner and Stormblade super-heavy tank were born within its armour cradles. However, since Ryza found itself bearing the brunt of not one but the two major Ork WAAAGH!s of Grax and Rarguts in 925.M41, the rivers of war materiel that flood its manufactoria canals lead only to its defenders -- the planet has turned every cannon, Stubber, and bullet it produces to an all-out battle for survival. In truth the Tech-priests of Ryza welcome the opportunity to see their creations in action first-hand, unleashing their most devastating weapons upon the foe. Despite the preponderance of ordnance and experimental weapons, much of the fighting on Ryza has come down to close quarters. The Forge World's defenders -- from Skitarii to hulking Kastelan Robots -- have all earned a reputation as particularly fierce combatants. Ryza's Skitarii, alongside the Warmongers of the Legio Crucius and the Astra Militarum's Catachan Jungle Fighters regiments, have taken righteous pleasure in turning Ryza's most devastating weapons upon the Orks of WAAAGH!s Grax and Rarguts. Every vault and warecrypt has been raided, every gun reliquary broken open. Transdimensional beamers light up the night, gatling Macrocannons roar their fury, and writhing lava hoses spew hot death into the streets. To set foot upon Ryza is to see a vision of war unbound -- and the violent industry of the Adeptus Mechanicus unleashed on a worldwide scale. History stellar cartographic map of the Forge Worlds of the Segmentum Ultima, including the Forge World of Ryza]] Ryza has long been a formidable Forge World, said to be second only to Mars, the homeworld of the Cult Mechanicus. Ryza once fuelled the larger Imperial war effort, but since WAAAGH! Grax descended, those days are long past. Now Ryza's Tech-priests turn every solar second of the planet's industry to the business of survival alone. The Greenskins made planetfall upon Ryza in the hundreds of millions. That number soars and dives with every hour, defying even the ability of the Magi Logis to quantify it. The Imperium has met the Greenskin assault with over twenty Astra Militarum regiments fighting alongside Skitarii macroclades, Legio Cybernetica war cohorts, even Titan Legions, yet the Orks attack afresh with every new dawn. The Tech-priests of Ryza have turned to more inventive measures: Virus Bombs rain down across the Obduras continent, laying low lesser Greenskins by the million as hermetically sealed ''Kastelan''-class Robot Maniples thump phosphor rounds into those Orks tough enough to survive. Above the polar metropolises, Ork fighter craft are harried by Onager Dunecrawlers modified to crawl up the sheer hive walls. Salvation teams reclaim fallen God-machines, piecing them back together with ritual and supplicant incense even as Ork Mekaniaks resurrect their Gargants with little more than welding torches and foul language. Upon Ryza it is not attrition that will carry the day, but invention -- a quality the Adeptus Mechanicus considers all but heretical. Notable Events *'The Dead of Ashkhelon (ca. 900s.M30)' - This particular campaign was one of the few documented during the Space Wolves Legion's involvement in the latter stages of the Great Crusade, which was a relatively brief but extremely brutal affair which took place on the world of Ashkhelon III in a star system of the same name in the Ultima Segmentum, close by what is known as the Golgothan Expanse. Discovered by an Imperial Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade, the people of Ashkhelon gratefully welcomed the Imperial emissaries and were rapidly brought into Imperial Compliance. A coterie of Magi from the Forge World of Ryza were despatched to the newly Compliant world. Over several solar decades, the Mechanicum Tech-priests helped Ashkhelon to become a working cog in the vast machine of the ever-expanding Imperium. But tragedy soon struck, when the Magi inadvertently awakened a long forgotten evil from the bygone era of Old Night. Before disappearing, a secret Mechanicum astropathic missive had been sent into the æther, which contained only the memetic symbol-forms for two words, translated to the common Imperial Gothic tongue as "Heretek Omega." In the parlance of the Omnissiah, this was a dire warning of having encountered a sin of the Dark Age of Technology; a human-made horror which could not be allowed to continue to exist. In response, the entire 11th Great Company of Jarl Varald Helsdawn was sent by Leman Russ, alongside a Mechanicum war-barque despatched from Mars by the Fabricator-General himself. The two forces descended to the surface of the planet, where they quickly discovered that despite the obvious signs of violence, there were no bodies whatsoever. But soon, the Imperial forces were beset upon by creatures from beneath the surface of the planet that were revealed to be no mere beasts of flesh and blood, but a mechanism, things of false life, neither Servitor nor Automata as the Imperium reckoned them. They were creatures akin to them, grown and spliced into frames of hydraulics and gears, and pulsing with unnatural life. While the battle raged upon the surface, several of the Space Wolves, alongside their Mechanicum allies, made their way into the darkness below. Here at last they discovered the fate of the dead of Ashkhelon, where they were stacked neatly in red-weeping alcoves by the tens of thousands, in vault after vault with no rhyme or reason other than that they had been placed there carefully. It was as the Space Wolves breached a final chamber that they encountered the foul presence of the thing that controlled the lesser creatures still attacking their forces upon the surface -- it was a Silica Animus, the blasphemy of a true, thinking machine-mind. Through the combined efforts of Ryza's Sicarian Ruststalkers and the Space Wolves, the Silica Animus' corporeal form was destroyed. Its machine-creatures, mere extensions of a single false life and inhuman will, then also perished, just as the body of a serpent dies when the head is struck off. The dead of Ashkhelon had been avenged, and a nightmare of ages past had been destroyed. From orbit, the two flagships of both the 11th Great Company, the Void Wyrm and the Mechanicum war-barque Axiom of Trinity, levelled every standing structure and hammered the sub-surface vaults into collapse. Ashkhelon was deemed a forbidden and Dead World to which humanity must never return. ]] *'The Woe of Ryza (925.M41)' - The brutal juggernaut of WAAAGH! Grax spills through the star systems of Ryza. Legions of Skitarii counterattack alongside Catachan Jungle Fighters and liberated human slaves. Word of the intense fighting attracts WAAAGH! Rarguts, which breaks through the Imperial Navy cordon to invade Ryza for the third time since the conflict began. The fate of a string of systems hinges upon the Forge World at their heart. In truth the Tech-priests of Ryza welcome the opportunity to see their creations in action first-hand. Ryza's Skitarii, alongside "The Warmongers" of the Legio Crucius and the Astra Militarum's Catachan regiments, have taken righteous pleasure in turning Ryza's most devastating weapons upon the foe. The Orks of WAAAGH! Grax and Rarguts, always on the lookout for more dakka, have done much the same. Every vault and warecrypt has been raided, every gun reliquary broken open in furtherance of the war effort. Transdimensional beamers light up the night, gatling Macrocannons roar their fury, and writhing lava hoses spew hot death into the streets. To set foot upon Ryza is to see a vision of war unbound -- and the violent industry of the Adeptus Mechanicus unleashed on a worldwide scale. *'Plague Wars (ca. 111.M42)' - Following the fall of Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade, Warp Storms of a magnitude not seen since the Age of Strife wrack the galaxy. A great Warp rift tears the fabric of reality, forming from the Eye of Terror and stretching all the way to the Hadex Anomaly in the Eastern Fringe, effectively cutting the galaxy in two. Every Forge World is cut off from its Explorator fleets and, for a time, from each other. All suffer invasions and raids as emboldened xenos and Chaos forces test them, probing for weaknesses, eager to destroy the bastions of Mankind's empire. No fewer than seven Forge Worlds are destroyed altogether and several more remain missing, buried beneath fierce and impenetrable storms. At the urgent call of the newly awakened Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman, over a dozen Forge Worlds, including Mars, Ryza, Metalica, and Triplex Phall, send reinforcements to Ultramar. There they aid the Avenging Son's armies in defence and counterattack against Chaos Renegades and the Death Guard during the Plague Wars. Notable Ryza Personnel *'Archno-warmonger Eyrotellamax' - A great hero of Ryaza, this Tech-priest led his armies against the xenos pirates that plagued their system. Willowy aliens fleeing the death of their empire, the pirates had become a terrible thorn in the side of Ryza. On vast artificial worlds and cold, airless lunar outposts the formidable Dhul X Cyberkastel Cohort, consisting of twenty-four ''Kastelan'' Robots, eliminated its designated targets in crackling blasts of phosphor and storms of flesh-withering flame. Eyrotellamax eventually met his end in the jaws of an enraged rift-wyrm. *'Xenophagest Hexterramere Vorght' - Hexterramere Vorght is a vastly intelligent and dedicated Tech-priest Dominus of Ryza, who has become driven with the obsession to discover "Orkadia" -- the original Ork homeworld and foundation of the entire Greenskin species. Since Ryza has become enmeshed in a deadly war of attrition which has fed entire cohorts of Skitarii and Servitors into the meatgrinder of Ryza's hellish battlefields, the Tech-priests of this Forge World desperately delved into the the depths of their world's logis vaults and Cogitator-crypts seeking ancient and forbidden secrets to defeat the rampaging Greenskin invaders. Xenophagest Vorght believes that the answer to the Orkoid question resides not within the crumbling data-structures of their Forge World, but hidden out among the stars. Vorght has taken these ideas to an altogether more extreme level, for he believes that somewhere in the void lies the origins of the Orks genetic foundations of the entire xenos species. Vorght does not want to merely defeat the Orks on Ryza -- he plans to destroy all Orks, forever. Forge World Protocols Red in Cog and Claw Tech-priests of Ryza point to aggressive combat doctrines and zealous training protocols to explain the exceptional hand-to-hand prowess of their troops. Skeptics, however, counter that such designs do not explain why Ryza troops seem to revel in close-quarters violence. Ryza Forces Appearance Ryza Iconography of Ryza]] The illuminated "R" of Ryza is borne proudly by its warriors. This icon incorporates the skull and cog of Mars, a nod towards Ryza's ancestry. Ryza Forge World Colours Ryza's Skitarii Legion has a proud history and a reputation for unshakeable faith. As with many Forge Worlds, Ryza's Skitarii often bear purity seals of blood-wax and parchment to signify their freedom from harmful scrapcode. The ochre armour plates and robes worn by Ryza's Skitarii are the same hue as the immense rust dunes that bestrew the planet. The interior of these robes are deep red in memory of the blood that has been spilt there over the millennia. The Tech-priests Dominus of Ryza dress in an ochre hue that represents the ever-shifting rust dunes of their arid and lifeless Forge World. Seniority within the priesthood of Ryza is indicated by the use of crimson on robes and armour -- the more red a Tech-priest wears, the more superior he is considered to be. Red also features sparingly on the warriors of Ryza, often appearing on the lining of robes, or on components of war machines. Copper is used as an embellishment, particularly on weapons like the Fulgurites' electroleech staves, or mechanical adornments like the Tech-priest's mechadendrite harness. Though the Legio Cybernetica of Ryza displays many thousands of variations in heraldry, all its robots bear combinations of ochre, deep red, silver and black. Each maniple's distribution of colour is echoed by the uniform of its assigned Cybernetica Datasmiths. Manufactoria Capabilities Ryza is renowned for the manufacture of Plasma Reactor and magnetic containment field technology. The arts and sophistication of this Forge World is claimed by some to be second only to that of Mars itself. It is then unsurprising that the Legio Crucius, whose associations with Ryza are said to predate the Great Crusade, is renowned as one of the most well-equipped Titan Legions in Imperial service, and sufficient in number to provide garrison forces for several smaller outlying Forge Worlds and Adeptus Mechanicus outposts whose Magi maintain fealty or alliance to Ryza and its masters. Ryza is also famed for its manufacture of plasma-based technologies and the complex art required to produce the magnetic containment fields that are an integral part of any plasma-using device. The Leman Russ Executioner main battle tank armed with its plasma-based Executioner Plasma Destroyer is manufactured exclusively on Ryza. It is said that Ryza's own Skitarii regiments are almost completely equipped with these rare armoured vehicles. The Stormblade super-heavy tank is also produced on Ryza, which was the first Forge World to begin to manufacture that pattern of tank for the Imperial Guard. At the height of their technical sophistication during the Great Crusade, the majority of Plasma Blastguns utilised on Legiones Astartes Stormblade super-heavy tanks were wrought upon Ryza, whose lords were known as the undisputed masters of this particular strand of machine lore. When the weapon fired, a roiling, barely contained bolt of raw plasma as bright as a sun was unleashed. All but the strongest of armour was reduced to slag by such an attack and it could defeat even Titan-grade Void Shields with relative ease. During this era, Ryza was also known for manufacturing the formidable Solar-Ryza Pattern Leman Russ Tank. The Solar Auxilia made extensive use of armoured vehicles enhanced to the "Solar" specification. These Leman Russ Tanks possessed an extensive array of equipment that allowed them to operate in the most hazardous of environmental conditions. Sources *''Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus'' (8th Edition), pp. 12, 21, 34-35, 50, 64, 95, 97-98, 101 *''Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus - Cult Mechanicus'' (7th Edition), pp. 29, 100-102, 104, 106 *''Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus - Skitarii'' (7th Edition), pp. 34, 38, 98-104 *''Codex: Imperial Guard'' (5th Edition), pp. 22, 27 *''Cult Mechanicus Painting Guide - Crusaders of the Machine God'' (Painting Guide), pp. 18-31 *''Dark Heresy: Purge the Unclean'' (RPG), pg. 140 *''Imperial Armour - Imperial Vehicles for Warhammer 40,000'', pg. 16 *''Imperial Armour Volume One - Imperial Guard & Imperial Navy'', pp. 8, 16, 61-62, 99, 101 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Three: Extermination'' (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 242 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Four: Conquest'' (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 89, 147 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Seven: Inferno'' (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 88-91 *''Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook'' (8th Edition), pg. 73 *''Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook'' (6th Edition), pg. 202 *''White Dwarf'' 390 (UK), "The Battle for Cardrim," pg. 30 Gallery File:RyzaSkitarii.png|Ryza Skitarii Vanguard unit 09-Tyba, Squad 44, 2nd Regiment, 3rd Glo-Corps, Radtainment Division Ryza Onager Dunecrawler.png|Ryza Onager Dunecrawler Ryza Ironstrider Engine.png|Ryza Ironstrider Ballistarii engine Ryza Vanguards.png|Ryza Skitarii Vanguard warriors Ryza Rangers.png|Ryza Skitarii Rangers Ryza Sicarian Rustwalkers.png|Ryza Sicarian Ruststalkers Ryza Sicarian Infiltrators.png|Ryza Sicarian Infiltrators File:Ryza_Skitarii_Warriors_1.png|Ryza Skitarii Rangers Ryza_Tech-Priests Dominii.png|A pair of Tech-priests Dominus; note that the ochre hue represents the ever-shifting rust dunes of their arid and lifeless Forge World; seniority is indicated by greater amounts of crimson in robes and armour Ryza_Legio Cybernetica.png|A Ryzan Tech-priest of the Legio Cybernetica Ryza_Kastelan Robot.png|A Ryzan ''Kastelan''-class Robot Ryza_Kataphron Destroyer.png|A Ryza Kataphron Destroyer ES:Ryza Category:R Category:Adeptus Mechanicus Category:Forge World Category:Imperium Category:Planets Category:Skitarii Category:Imperial planets Category:Collegia Titanica